08Aug2009

Mega Drop-Down Menu Design Showcase

Back in March, Jacob Nielsen made a surprising recommendation for using "mega drop-down menus," saying that:

Big, two-dimensional drop-down panels group navigation options to eliminate scrolling and use typography, icons, and tooltips to explain the user's choices.

I've seen these types of menus popping up more often around the web, usually on e-commerce websites.

Now that they are a more widely recognized design convention, I thought it would be useful to pull together some of the best examples into a mega drop-down menu design showcase.

EA mega drop-down menu

As usual, if you have more examples to share, please send them my way or let me know in the comments.

Posted on: August 8, 2009 | 12 Comments

12 Comments Posted

Virgin.com has those implemented with their recent re-design.

1. Posted by kevinn on August 09, 2009

Yes, I looked at the Virgin site. I just didn't think the mega drop-downs they used were styled particularly well. They functioned fine; they just looked pretty utilitarian.

2. Posted by Christian Watson on August 09, 2009

That's pretty cool and effective. I've seen a few sites using more in depth comprehensive menu systems like this. I like them, if they're done well.

I can see them going badly wrong though once marketers get a hold of the concept... Synical? Maybe.

3. Posted by Evan Skuthorpe on August 10, 2009

I like the drop downs with added resource, but I found that some of them are so hefty they add more load time. Are there some ways to lighten the load, keeping them just as effective, but with limiting the bandwidth needs?

4. Posted by Christian on August 10, 2009

I very like this! its so cool and effective ;)

5. Posted by Webdesign on August 12, 2009

Michelin's North American site has one

6. Posted by Chris Moritz on August 12, 2009

Thank you! Very interesting :-)

7. Posted by W3Spor on August 13, 2009

Thanks for posting these. I love good menus and I don't think a lot of smaller businesses and sites give enough thought to the importance of the menu.

8. Posted by Rob on August 20, 2009

I very like this! its so cool.

9. Posted by Krzysztof on October 16, 2009

How about some tutorials for those drop downs?

10. Posted by Web Design from Lyons Solutions on December 27, 2009

I like this idea. Its attractive and effective.

11. Posted by Sherwin shine on January 16, 2010

any nice tutorials besides the one google finds??

12. Posted by alex on February 20, 2010